Growing and Kicking

     Baby girl is now 27 weeks old and starts week 28 tomorrow.  According to some that means tomorrow I will be entering the 3rd trimester! Yeah! Of course, others may claim that I have a week or two to go OR that  I have been in the 3rd trimester for a few weeks now.  

     This whole "how far along am I" thing can be both confusing and exasperating.  I have come to dread the "how many months are you?" question in particular. Pregnancy is often thought of as being 40 weeks, or 10 months.  Which works out nicely if each month is 4 weeks long, but this tends to irritate me because, except for February, each month isn't 4 weeks long...it is approximately 4.3 weeks long.  So 12 weeks isn't 3 months, 13 weeks is.  To add to this confusion you also have to consider who asked the question.  Someone recently through pregnancy, or who has young children, won't bat an eye if you say "9 months and my due date is in 4 weeks", because they are familiar with the 10 month counting plan.  Whereas somebody not familiar gets really confused as to why you are 9 months pregnant and have 4 weeks to go. Anyways, the long and the short of it is that when asked how many months I am, between reconciling my wish for exactitude in having 4.3 week long months, and in trying to figure out the month-counting experience of the questioner, my brain tends to short circuit and I blurt out something like "27 weeks" in the hope that they will simply convert that number to whatever month sounds good to them.

However, I am straying off topic as the real point of this post is to a) update you on baby girl's development, b) post a picture of baby girl's host (i.e. moi) at the special request of my mom, and c) show you a video of her kicking!  

A) Development

• Baby girl is probably 2lbs or more by now.
• The fine hair covering her body (lanugo) is starting to disappear.  Although it is quite possible that she won't lose all of it before she is born.
• She now has distinct sleeping and waking cycles.  I feel her moving around the most during the morning (~8-11am), and then again in the evening (~9pm-11pm). However it may also be that I am simply more aware of her wriggling during those time periods because I am slightly more quiescent, especially for the evening chunk of time.
• Her tastebuds are developed.  In fact, she has more tastebuds now then she will a month after birth!
• Her lungs are coming online more and more.  She should be producing surfactant and taking small breaths of amniotic fluid.
• Her retina's are formed, she can tell the difference between light and dark.  If her eyes are open she is probably practicing blinking, and if her eyes aren't open they will be very soon!

B) Baby girl's growth chamber

The growth chamber continues to grow.  I have been measuring my circumference and for one of these posts I'll throw up a graph I promise!

C) Baby girl kicking!

Okay, you will probably have to watch this video a few times to see it.  What happens is that I start to take a breath in (so you will notice my belly moving up slightly) and before I breath out there is a bouncing of my belly up and down.  (I think it is easiest to see if you focus about 1 cm left of my belly button.) That is her moving!  I have to admit that when I watch my belly move from the outside I can't help but think of the "Alien" movies.  Keep wiggling alien baby!